


No Going Back

by Donda



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Ableist Language, Amputation, Angst, Because Max has a hard time accepting, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Prosthesis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-02 16:09:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14548428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donda/pseuds/Donda
Summary: After a road battle gone wrong, Max finds himself in a situation he never imagined and frankly doesn’t know how to handle. He’s lucky to have the support of those close to him, but the road to recovery is not going to be an easy one.





	No Going Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [B_Kilroy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/B_Kilroy/gifts).



The sun blazes in Max’s eyes as he wakes up, and he squeezes them shut tighter, trying to block out the bright light shining through his eyelids. It feels like it’s burning into the back of his skull, even without opening his eyes and looking at it. He groans, his head feeling light and his thoughts flighty, and he turns his head away from the light. The light moves, and Max almost opens his eyes. That’s not the sun. The sun doesn’t move like that…  
  
“He’s waking up.”  
  
Max swallows and his brow creases. Who’s here? Where is he? What’s going on? That voice was familiar, though it feels distorted and he can’t quite place it.  
  
His eyes blink open briefly only to close again in reaction to the light in his face. He scrunches them shut again and tries to turn away for a second time, but the light follows him again. Finally he lifts a hand to try to shield his eyes. His arm feels impossibly heavy, almost numb. He swallows again, though there’s nothing in his mouth. He opens his mouth as he finally gets his hand up to shade his face, and his lips stick together. His tongue sticks to the top of his mouth.  
  
He remembers his thirst only as he realizes how dry his mouth is. The light moves again, settling to the side of him, and he moves his hand to keep blocking it as he squints his eyes open.  
  
He had been out in the wastes. The memories drift back to him slowly, first as feelings more than as actual memories. The baking heat of the inside of a car. The thirst of days without water. Pain. Delirium.  
  
But this is not the wastes. It doesn’t feel the same as where he was. It’s stuffier, and aside from the brightly-burning light beside him, everything around him is fairly dark and cool. And blurry. He makes out shapes and dull colors, but closes his eyes again, feeling suddenly dizzy.  
  
He closes and opens his mouth once more, and tries to form some questioning word despite the dryness. His voice is stuck like sand in his throat.  
  
“Can he have water?” Another voice, even more familiar, but he’s not even sure if he’s imagining this or not.  
  
“Yes, here.”  
  
A hand slides behind his head a moment later and pushes it up. The cool rim of a cup meets his lips, and he pushes his head forward and gulps desperately at the water pouring into his mouth.  
  
“Hey, slowly.”  
  
The cup tips back down and starts to retreat from his mouth, and he brings both hands to it, to push it back to his lips, to drink the rest of it down. His hands meet not the warm flesh of whoever is holding the cup, but a cold gauntlet of metal. He pushes it toward his mouth anyway, his mind only on his need for water.  
  
“You’ll get it all,” says the voice beside him again calmly. “Just take it slow.”  
  
A little more water pours into his mouth and he gulps it down. He groans when the flow stops again, pushes at the hand in front of him, and is rewarded by a little more water.  
  
He doesn’t realize he’s finished the cup until the hand holding it tugs gently out of his grip and the hand behind his head lowers it back down.  
  
He opens his eyes and tries to keep them open this time.  
  
“How do you feel?”  
  
He looks to the person beside him. Still just fuzzy shapes and colors. The person leans toward him, and clarifies a little bit. Short, dark hair. Unclear face, but fair skin. A light-colored shirt, and some dark shape over the left shoulder. A cool hand comes to rest on his forehead, and his mind calms a little. He tries to push himself up, but the heavy metal gauntlet falls on his chest and urges him back down.  
  
“F…Furiosa?” His voice is so rough it sounds alien even to him.  
  
“Hey.” She leans in a little closer, and he can make out a faint smile on her face, though he still thinks he can see traces of worry.  
  
How did she get here? Or maybe he’s not where he thought he was. He closes his eyes again and swallows, his mouth feeling only slightly better than it had. He had been in the wastes, he was sure of it.  
  
“Where…?”  
  
“You’re at the Citadel. You’re safe.” Furiosa’s thumb strokes over his brow. “They found you…” Her voice chokes a little bit. “They found you half a day away.”  
  
It comes back to him in sudden clarity. He hadn’t really been heading back to the Citadel, not yet at least. Just sort of sweeping near it and back away again for now. He hadn’t been paying enough attention. Some raiders caught up to him, chased him down with three cars and a rain of bullets. They shot out his tire, his car careened and he lost control. He remembers bumping violently over some low rocks, and then a moment of near weightlessness as the car dropped off a ledge. The ground coming up at him was the last thing he saw before he smashed into his steering wheel. He must have hit his head in the crash, because when he next woke up, the previously light sky was dark.  
  
The car was crushed from the impact, the front end crumpled and bent up, nearly covering the broken-out windscreen. It was still sitting at an angle, its rear propped up on the base of the ledge the car had flown off of. Max laid for hours with his chest pressed against the steering wheel before he finally found the strength to free his arms and move. He tried and tried to get himself out, but his legs were pinned between the frame of the seat and what used to be the underside of the dash and steering column.  
  
He had figured he was going to die there.  
  
He takes stock of himself now, trying to determine how bad off he is, and the pain in his body slowly comes back to him. His head throbs, and he can feel the sting of a split in his scalp. His face is cut and swollen in places. His chest feels tight and bruised, each breath almost a stretch of its ability to move, and there’s the throbbing pain of broken ribs. There’s a gash on his shoulder, a few smaller cuts on his arms and chest. His left wrist throbs, and as he tries to move it, he can feel it’s swollen and stiff. His right arm spikes with pain when he moves it, and there is a tight wrapping around it. His gut aches. He’s sure he’s covered in bruises everywhere imaginable.  
  
His legs are nothing but pain. He groans and lifts one to try to push himself backward on the bed. He wants to sit up against the wall and get a better view of the state he’s in.  
  
“Hey, no, don’t move.” Furiosa reaches toward him again, but he’s quickly pushing himself up on his elbows. His foot didn’t meet any resistance when he tried that. Hell, he can’t even _feel_ his foot.  
  
Furiosa’s voice is shaking slightly as she speaks again. “They had to pry you out of the car.”  
  
“What…” Max stares down at himself. The blankets over him are laying all wrong. He reaches down and tears them off of his legs, and for a split second, stops breathing. His right leg, the one he had just tried to use to push himself up with, simply ends about half way down the thigh. His left stops just below the knee. Both are covered in bandages soaking through with spots of blood. Max stares.  
  
“Your legs were crushed,” Furiosa says, forcing her voice to sound calm, if only to try to keep Max himself a little calmer. “I’m sorry. There was no way to save them…”  
  
Max continues to simply stare. Words are far past his ability to form.  
  
Finally, slowly, he lets himself lower back onto the pillow and stares up at the ceiling in shock.  
  
“Max?” Furiosa leans over him again, but he doesn’t respond. He barely even hears. He doesn’t even think far enough to realize what this means for him. All he can think about is the image of the too-short remains of his own legs, wrapped and bleeding.  
  
“Max, it’ll be okay. We’ll do everything we can for you.”  
  
This can’t be happening. It’s a dream. A nightmare. It has to be. He closes his eyes and wills himself to wake up from it.  
  
When he doesn’t respond, Furiosa sits back and watches him quietly.  
  
It’s a long time before he opens his eyes again, and when he does, it’s to the same scenery he had closed them against. He looks slowly over toward Furiosa, and she gives him what she hopes is an encouraging look.  
  
The look he gives back to her is nothing but fear and worry.  
  
“You’ll be alright,” she tells him quietly. Max looks down. He doesn’t see how. He doesn’t respond.  
  
He doesn’t talk again. When he eventually drifts into a reluctant sleep, Furiosa leaves him to his doctor’s care. As much as she would like to stay with Max right now, she has duties to attend to, and she reminds herself that he’s in good hands under Gale’s watchful eye.  
  
“Send someone for me if he asks,” she tells Gale as she leaves. She knows this isn’t going to be easy for him, and figures she of all people is probably best equipped to help him through the challenges ahead.  
  
Max jumps awake later in the day to a soft sound beside him, and pulls his arms up defensively before he’s even fully remembered where he is.  
  
“Sorry,” Cheedo says, finishing putting a bowl down on a low stool placed beside his bed. “I have dinner for you if you’re hungry.”  
  
Max looks over at it and shakes his head. His stomach is empty and growling, has been for days, but he’s lost his appetite.  
  
“Water?” She asks instead, and this time Max nods.  
  
She props him up and helps hold the cup to his lips as he drinks down the cool liquid.  
  
When she goes to lay him back down again, he grunts and shakes his head. “Want to sit up.”  
  
Cheedo nods and complies, helping to move him into a comfortable position, with a pillow between his back and the wall behind him. “I’ll leave your food here for you,” she says, then turns with a last sad glance and leaves him alone again. He rests his broken arm in his lap and grimaces, sitting up a little straighter to try to alleviate the pain in his ribs.  
  
Max stares down at his legs. Somebody had covered them with the blanket again, but he can still see how it lays more or less flat on the bed where there should be legs beneath it. He still has a hard time believing that this is reality. It doesn’t feel like one of his usual nightmares, but never in all his years of hardships after everything went to hell has he been faced with something this bad, something that changes things this much.  
  
It’s a while later when someone else approaches, and he looks up sharply. It’s the old Vuvalini, Gale, who had become the resident doctor of the Citadel after the revolution.  
  
“How do you feel?” She approaches and crouches next to his bed.  
  
“Like shit,” he answers bluntly. The pain by now has come back to him in full force, and he can barely even see straight. Every bit of him hurts, but it all pales in comparison to the agony in his legs.  
  
“Anything numb? Anything you can’t move?”  
  
Max shakes his head. He wishes he were numb.  
  
“I just need to look,” she says, carefully lifting the blanket off his legs and moving it aside. Max can’t look, his stomach flipping uncomfortably at the sight now. She rolls up his already short pant legs, inspects his bandages, touches the ends of his legs gently until he growls at her for it, and then covers him back up. “It went well, all things considered,” she comments.  
  
Max scoffs. He doesn’t think anything about this situation deserves the word ‘well.’ He’s only just started to consider what life without legs would be like, and he doesn’t like any of it. “Wasn’t there something you could have done?” He has a hard time believing that just cutting off his legs was even remotely the right choice, and he feels anger bubble up in him that he didn’t get a say in what happened to his own legs.  
  
She shakes her head. “Your bones were practically shrapnel. There was no other option.”  
  
Max stares down at the blanket over his legs. “Could’ve tried…”  
  
“No,” she says firmly. “Believe me, it just would have been worse for you. They were never going to heal. I saved as much as I could. The rest was a lost cause.”  
  
Max closes his eyes, trying to hold back the push of tears. He nods at her, wishing now that she’d just go away. After a moment, he hears her footsteps slowly retreating, and he collapses back into the pillow behind him, letting out a shaky breath. Part of him knows it’s not fair of him, but he hates her.  
  
Furiosa comes back that evening.  
  
“You should eat,” she says, picking up the bowl Cheedo had left for him and taking its place on the stool beside the bed.  
  
“Not hungry.”  
  
“When was the last time you ate something?”  
  
Max shrugs. He doesn’t know. Days ago. Before the accident. He’s not sure how long he was trapped there before he was found.  
  
“Eat,” she says, “even if you don’t feel like it.” She places the bowl in his lap.  
  
Max stares down at it. “Thirsty,” he says instead.  
  
“Eat some of that and then I’ll get you some water.”  
  
Max glares at her.  
  
“You’re not going to heal if you starve yourself.”  
  
He grunts. “Doesn’t fucking matter. ‘M never going to walk again anyway.”  
  
Furiosa’s mouth tightens. “That doesn’t mean you’re going to be stuck in a bed the rest of your life. There are options.” She holds up her metal arm to demonstrate.  
  
Max is silent. He looks down at the bowl in his lap for a few moments before he half-heartedly picks up the spoon and brings a bite to his mouth. Furiosa watches him quietly until he’s eaten a good amount, and then she gets up and fetches some water for him. He abandons his food in favor of the water as soon as she hands it to him. His hand shakes and he struggles to hold on to the cup with his bad wrist and hand, but empties it quickly, then returns to staring down at the rest of his food, making no move to finish it.  
  
After a few minutes Furiosa picks it up off his lap and moves it aside to the floor.  
  
“Just let yourself heal for now,” she says quietly. “We’ll tackle the issue of walking when we get there.”  
  
Max nods but doesn’t say anything. Furiosa stays with him a while longer, then bids him goodnight after Gale has checked on him again, and Max is left alone in his corner of the medical room.  
  
Max doesn’t sleep much that night, and by morning he has spent plenty of time stewing in the knowledge of his new situation, in the knowledge of what his life will be like from here on out. He’ll be lucky if he’ll be able to hobble around on prosthetic legs unassisted. Will he ever even drive again? Probably not.  
  
He greets Gale with a silent glare and doesn’t bother sitting up or turning over as she puts down a plate of food for him. If she notices the look he gives her, she doesn’t say anything about it.  
  
“I need to make sure you’re not getting an infection,” she says, kneeling by him and moving the blanket aside. “How’s the pain?”  
  
“Bad,” he grunts resentfully.  
  
“Worse than before?” She places a hand over one of his stumps and he feels supremely uncomfortable at the touch.  
  
“No.”  
  
“Doesn’t feel hot,” she says. “I think you got lucky, but we’ll keep an eye on it.”  
  
Max huffs. She keeps picking words that he’s sure don’t apply here. After she’s checked his other stump, she replaces the blanket and gets up to leave him to go check on the other patients spread about the room. Max puts his back to her and stares at the wall.  
  
“Hey,” he hears after maybe an hour of nothing but his own thoughts.  
  
He lifts his head and looks over his shoulder. Capable is standing beside his bed, Dag, and Toast behind her.  
  
“We came to see how you’re doing.”  
  
“Fine,” he lies curtly.  
  
Capable glances over her shoulder at the women behind her. He can tell he’s not fooling any of them. Capable sits down on the stool. “Max, I know this is a big change. I know it’s not going to be easy. But it’s not the end.”  
  
“Just leave me alone,” he growls, turning his back to her again.  
  
There’s a tense silence behind him, and then he hears quiet murmurs of “let’s go,” and retreating footsteps.  
  
It’s not much later that he hears the sound of the stool moving against the floor, and he tenses. Can’t anybody leave him alone?  
  
“Came to make sure I eat again?” He asks, sensing Furiosa behind him.  
  
There’s a quiet breath. “No, I came to see how you were doing.”  
  
“How do you think?”  
  
“Bad,” she admits, and when Max doesn’t respond, she puts a hand gently on his shoulder.  
  
Max jerks it away.  
  
“Max, I understand.”  
  
He doesn’t respond for a moment. “This place is no better than it used to be,” he finally says in a low voice. “I didn’t even get a choice, or a chance. I would have thought you’d actually help people now, not just chew them up and spit them out again.”  
  
“We did the best for you that we could,” she starts, but Max turns over suddenly and faces her.  
  
“The best you could? By cutting off my legs?”  
  
Furiosa falls silent at the quiet rage in his voice.  
  
“May as well have killed me,” he growls. “It would have been kinder.” He can tell by the look on her face that he’s hurt her, but frankly he doesn’t care. “Tell me,” he says, pushing the matter even when he knows he’s done enough damage and he should stop. “Whose call was it? Yours? Gale’s? Who do I have to thank for my new life as an invalid?”  
  
Furiosa’s expression is closed off to him now and is slowly hardening into a look of tough, if perhaps false, imperviousness.  
  
Cheedo has been listening from a short distance away, and she turns suddenly and storms toward Max’s bed. Furiosa just as quickly stands up and sweeps Cheedo in the opposite direction.  
  
“We had no choice!” Cheedo hisses at Furiosa, sounding upset. “He has no right to—“  
  
“Just let him be angry,” Furiosa says tiredly. “He needs to for a little while.”  
  
Max rolls back over to face the wall as they leave him.  
  
He’s left mostly alone for the rest of that day, except for one visit from Gale, who replaces his untouched food from that morning and checks on the state of his legs again without saying anything more than strictly necessary. He’s sure she knows he’s angry, but it doesn’t seem to bother her, and if anything, that just pisses him off more. How can she simply reduce him to what he is now and not even feel bad about it?  
  
The next morning, after another night of only snippets of restless sleep, Furiosa brings him his breakfast. She sits down heavily on the stool beside his bed and drops the bowl in his lap. “Eat.”  
  
Max won’t look at her or the food.  
  
Furiosa sits with her arms crossed. She can tell even in the state Max is in, he knows what he said yesterday was hurtful. She tried not to let it bother her, but his words have been eating away at her all night. _May as well have killed me. It would have been kinder._ The other things he said felt like just the anger talking, but this, she feels, he meant.  
  
How little he must think of her if he thinks death is a better option than being an amputee. It’s been years since she let her own amputation hinder her; part of that is because she has a prosthesis that functions very well for her, and part of it comes from years of experience doing whatever she has to to make up for having only one arm, but it hurts to think that he might still see it as a weakness. She’s stronger for her loss, and she knows Max can be too, but he’d rather have death.  
  
At the same time, she realizes part of why those words hurt so much is because it reminds her uncomfortably of how she felt after she lost her arm. The profound grief of losing a part of oneself, the fear of the future, of how people would treat her, of all the things she would be unable to do now. She wasn’t unlike Max in her fierce independence at the time she lost her arm, and the fear of losing that independence was both enraging and paralyzing. She hadn’t known if she could continue on like that.  
  
More than that, though, she cares about Max. She’s determined to help him through this and isn’t going to give up until Max is as independent as he was before his accident, but it hurts to think he’s not willing to even try himself.  
  
She’s not going to let him give up. She’s not going to let him fall into the same hole she did. She had no one to lean on as she recovered from her loss, but he has her and she’s going to make sure he knows it. She pushes down the anger that simmers every time she thinks about the things he said and resolves to not let him see his current state as a weakness.  
  
But where does she even start? He’s still angry and words are hardly going to get through to him until he cools down. As the minutes pass and he doesn’t even acknowledge her, her frustration grows.  
  
“You don’t have to like me anymore,” she finally says, “but I’m not going to let you try to throw the rest of your life away so easily, so stop starving yourself and eat something.”  
  
Max moves the bowl from his lap to the edge of the bed beside him and puts his back to her.  
  
Furiosa heaves a sigh. “I’m not leaving until you eat.”  
  
After a moment, Max rolls back over. He doesn’t look at her, but grabs the spoon and starts scooping the mash almost resentfully into his mouth. Furiosa’s brows rise. She’s not quite sure if she should be insulted or not, but he’s eating, so she’ll take it. When he scrapes the bowl clean and rolls over to put his back to her again, she sighs quietly, picks up the bowl, and leaves him.  
  
Max scowls over his shoulder as she goes. He realizes she may not even be the one one deserving of his anger, but it boils inside of him so hot that he can’t keep it from seeping out.  
  
As the day passes, a sinking despair creeps up on him. He starts to feel a little bad for the way he acted, though he’s still angry. He knows it wasn’t their fault. He knows they would only have done the best they could for him, and if that meant they couldn’t save his legs, then that was the truth of it. He still wishes he could have at least had a say in the decision, though. Maybe then, at least, he’d feel less helpless over the state of his own life now.  
  
When Furiosa next comes back, she can read the change in his demeanor as easily as she can read a book.  
  
“Hey,” she tries gently as she sits down beside his bed.  
  
A quiet “mm,” is all he has the energy to give her back, but when she doesn’t say anything else, he finally rolls from his side to his back and looks up at her. “Didn’t mean what I said,” he rumbles quietly, and Furiosa’s body language relaxes a little.  
  
“I do understand,” she says. “It’s not easy.” She offers him a bowl of soup, and he takes it.  
  
She stays beside him until he’s finished the bowl, and Gale comes by with Cheedo trailing behind her.  
  
“Time to change your bandages,” Gale announces, and Max swallows.  
  
“Gotta piss,” he murmurs. After days of dehydration, the water he had been drinking seems to have finally caught up to him, and he gradually noticed the feeling of a full bladder. He had put the issue off as long as he could, not looking forward to the prospect of having to ask for help just to piss, but he can’t put it off much longer.  
  
The three women help him get out of bed and use the bed pan, and it’s just as humiliating as he had expected, but he swallows his pride and lets them help. He could do more himself if his arm weren’t broken and his wrist weren’t messed up, but as he is, he resigns himself to having to accept help for a while.  
  
Max keeps his eyes closed as Gale and Cheedo unwrap the bandages from his legs and inspect the stitches. He doesn’t open them until the new bandages are on and the blanket is draped across his lap again. When they’re done and they leave him, he rolls over, putting his back to the room, and stares absently at the wall.  
  
Furiosa, too, eventually leaves him alone.  
  
The days pass slowly as he gradually heals. He hates that he has to ask for help for everything he does, and he settles into a quiet depression. The sisters and Furiosa try their best to help him, but he feels it’s a lost cause.  
  
He’s trapped. He may not have bars around him this time, but he’s no more able to leave now than he was when he was a captive. It helps that this isn’t the old Blood Shed, but it starts to feel the same. Dark, grim, full of people injured or facing the end of their life. The urge to run becomes so strong he can feel it like an itch under his skin. He wants to get away from here, wants to be free, wants to jump in a car and drive until he runs out of gas. But there’s not a damn thing he can do about it.  
  
“Got someone for you to talk to,” Toast calls to him as she approaches a few days later, and Max rolls over slowly. “Figured you had to be bored out of your mind here.”  
  
He would be, if he weren’t so absorbed in his misery.  
  
A war boy follows behind Toast, walking with an obvious limp and a quiet clank with every other step. Max sighs, but slowly pushes himself up and leans back against the wall. What’s her goal with this? To make him feel better because someone else lost a leg too? It’s not going to work, but if it’ll make her happy, he’ll humor her.  
  
“This is Spark,” Toast introduces, motioning to the war boy as he steps up beside her. “I figured he could, you know… Give you some pointers or something…” She trails off at Max’s dubious look. “Just talk to him,” she says with a bit of a huff. “You never know, it might help you.”  
  
Max looks Spark over as Toast steps away and he approaches. His right leg ends above the knee, and his stump is strapped into a rough but sturdy-looking prosthetic leg. It’s more of a peg than anything, but Spark strides toward him and lowers himself slowly down onto the stool beside Max.  
  
Max looks down at his lap. Spark is quiet for an awkward moment, watching Max carefully.  
  
“It sucks,” Spark finally starts, and Max tears his eyes away from the pattern on the blanket and looks over at him. “I know it sucks,” Spark continues. “Doubly for you, I guess.” He taps his good leg. “I was at least spared one. But it’s not easy to lose a limb.”  
  
Max sighs quietly. How long is he going to have to put up with this guy trying to give him a pep talk?  
  
“But it gets easier. Ya get used to it.” Spark studies him as he speaks.  
  
“Don’t want to get used to it,” Max murmurs. He wants his legs back.  
  
“Yeah, well, if you find a way to not have to, let me know. I wouldn’t mind having a real leg again so I can rejoin my crew.” There’s another awkward span of silence as Max doesn’t answer. “It’s not that I mind being a blackthumb now,” Spark tries again. “But I miss the way things were.”  
  
Max sits silently and mostly tunes the man out as he launches into the story of how he lost his leg, of what it was like to heal from the injury, of what it was like to adjust to his new life. Something about an explosion, about weeks of agony and phantom pains, and some story about his first time on a prosthetic leg.  
  
When his tone tells Max that he’s finally done talking, Max looks up at him again.  
  
“Look,” Spark says with a sigh, realizing he hasn’t gotten through to Max in the least. “You’re Furiosa’s best mate, and we all know you wouldn’t be able to keep up with her if you weren’t tough. If I could do this,” he taps his metal leg, “you can too.”  
  
Max is still doubtful. “Thanks,” he says flatly, “but I doubt I’ll be able to keep up with her anymore.”  
  
Spark looks a little sad. “Well you damn well won’t if you don’t even try.”  
  
Max looks down and doesn’t say anything.  
  
“There’s no going back from what happened,” Spark says with a sigh, slowly standing up from the stool. “And you’re not doing yourself any favors by being miserable about it. Your only chance of not being miserable the rest of your life is to accept it and work with what you’ve got.”  
  
With that, he turns and walks away, leaving Max to his thoughts again.  
  
It’s later that day that Furiosa comes for another visit. She’s visited him at least once every day, has tried her best to keep him engaged and to not let his spirits spiral downward further than she can help. This time something clatters along with her as she walks, but Max doesn’t bother rolling over to see.  
  
“Dug something up for you,” she says with an unusually cheerful voice. Max looks over his shoulder at her, but gives no response and doesn’t bother looking at what she brought.  
  
“Come on,” she says with a sigh. “You’re not doing anything good for yourself moping all day.” She pulls him up and hooks her arms under his and hauls him off the bed. Max grumbles at the treatment, but she moves him into a chair, and Max slumps despondently in the seat. It’s a wheelchair, and somewhere in the back of his mind he thinks he should be happy to be getting out of here for once, but he can’t really bring himself to care. He’s still trapped in the Citadel.  
  
“Perfect!” Gale exclaims as Furiosa wheels Max by her. “Get him outside. A nice nap in the sun will do him good.”  
  
Max doesn’t talk as she wheels him through the tunnels, but Furiosa feels compelled to fill the silence. “This is yours now,” she says. “You should use it. Get out of that room now and then.”  
  
“Only got one good arm,” he points out. He figures he probably shouldn’t be using his broken arm to push himself around in a wheelchair.  
  
Furiosa huffs, almost a laugh. As if she hadn’t thought of that. “See that lever on the left? It’ll lock the wheels together so you can push with one hand and it’ll still go straight. Unlock it to turn.”  
  
Max looks at the lever impassively. His legs are healing quickly, and it probably won’t be long before Gale kicks him out of the medical room. He knows it’s about time he started learning to live here on his own, but just doesn’t have the will to move if he doesn’t have to. Plus, how far is he really going to get in here? There are stairs everywhere, and he’s not exactly getting past them in a wheelchair.  
  
Furiosa takes him out to the lift bay and rolls him to the edge of the large platform and sets the brake on the wheelchair. The sun hits his face and he closes his eyes. It feels good. Warm. He relaxes a little. Furiosa sits down on the platform beside him.  
  
“I’ve cleared out a room for you on this level,” Furiosa says. “You can come here, go to the repair bays…” She looks up at him, and he gives only a faint nod in acknowledgement. “The stairs up to the mess hall aren’t too steep,” she says. “I’m working on having a ramp put over them.”  
  
Max finally looks at her, his brow slightly crumpled. She’s doing a lot for him, and it makes him feel a little bad. He gives her another small nod in acknowledgement and thanks.  
  
Furiosa gives him a reassuring smile. They fall into silence for a few minutes until she speaks again. “I know you don’t feel lucky with everything that happened… But it was sheer luck that they found you out there.” She falls silent again for a brief moment. “You just… never would have come back… And I never would have known what happened.” She’s trying hard to keep her voice steady.  
  
Max watches emotions pass over her face, but he doesn’t know what to say. He knows he came close to dying out there, but somehow he didn’t expect that to affect her so much. He does know she cares - how can he not know, really, with everything she does for him on the occasions he comes in from the wastes, be it because he has information for them, because he’s injured and doesn’t know where else to go, because he’s hit a hard patch and is in desperate need of supplies, or because he simply for once in his life admits he needs the company of friendly faces around him. Every time he comes back here, he can see the relief on her face, can feel the warmth of her welcome, can’t help but notice that she always offers him far more than he’d ever ask for. It’s still strange to him to remember he’s cared about.  
  
“I’m so sorry it came to this, Max… but I’m glad to have you here.” When she looks over at him, her eyes are red.  
  
Max lifts a hand out of his lap and rests his elbow on the armrest of the chair, his hand extended out toward her. Furiosa smiles faintly and clasps it, then leans toward him and presses her forehead against the back of his hand.  
  
“Hope you mean that,” Max murmurs, a faint smile barely pulling at his own mouth. “You’re stuck with me now.”  
  
He meant it as a joke, but in saying it, he makes himself a bit sad. The little smile quickly fades. It’s not that he doesn’t like the Citadel. Of all the places he could have ended up, he’s grateful that he was found by scouts of the Citadel instead of denizens of some other settlement, but the thought keeps cutting through his mind that he’s trapped here. He’ll never drive again, never be able to leave if he wants to, never be able to go wherever he wants, and he mourns that loss.  
  
Furiosa watches him as he struggles with emotions as well, and squeezes his hand. “You’ll be okay. I promise.”  
  


* * *

  
After the ramp is built a week later, Gale simply stops bringing Max food each day. He’s gotten his appetite back well enough that he ends up with no choice but to ask to be helped into his chair and to roll himself up to the mess hall. Once he’s done that, he figures he might as well stay in the chair, and he rolls himself somewhere else. Within a few days he’s explored every inch of the Citadel he can reach from his chair, has become familiar with the boundaries of his new captivity, knows every bit of what makes up his new world.  
  
It’s small. Depressingly so. He misses having the whole of the wasteland laid out before him, the choice to go anywhere he pleased wholly his and nobody else’s. Now his choices are limited to a few areas inside a rock fortress. Two levels, some hallways, and a handful of rooms. That’s all he’s got left.  
  
Eventually, he settles into one of a few places, either to stare out at the people bustling around at the foot of the Citadel, or over to watch the blackthumbs work on whatever project is in progress that day, or to watch life go on around him in the mess hall. But he stays out of the way, tries to stay out of sight. People here know him to varying degrees, and he hates the sympathetic looks he gets now. He sees Spark once, and quickly turns away to find somewhere else to go.  
  
Furiosa spots him one day sitting despondently in the sun at the edge of the lift bay. It’s been a couple weeks and she hasn’t seen him do a single thing since he got here. When he used to come visit, back before the accident, he’d always be busy, always be helping with something. Now, he just… sits.  
  
“C’mon,” she says, grabbing the handles of his wheelchair and rolling him backwards. “I need a hand with something.”  
  
Max looks over his shoulder at her and simply lets her take him away.  
  
Furiosa doesn’t actually have anything for him to do, but she figures she can come up with something. Mostly she just wants to help him, and if he won’t engage on his own, she’ll take it into her own hands. She hates watching him sit around looking so miserable all the time.  
  
She was the same. She thinks she didn’t spend quite as long as Max has before she pulled herself out of it and worked on moving on, but she can’t be sure of that. Time was warped and unsteady when she was in that state.  
  
She remembers the all-encompassing misery, though. The feeling that she’d never again be able to help herself. At first the fear of dependence led to the belief of dependence, which led to an unintentional but very self-imposed helplessness. Watching Max go through the same thing is a painful reminder.  
  
But she also reminds herself that he has what she didn’t: support, understanding, and care.  
  
She finds a work area with a low enough workbench, and parks him in front of it. “Stay put,” she says, and moves off to find something for him to do. What she finds is a small pump motor she had been working on and had set aside.  
  
“Here,” she says, putting it down in front of him. “Never quite figured out what’s wrong with it. It runs, but not well.”  
  
Max looks at her skeptically, but picks up a screwdriver from the end of the worktable and starts dismantling the pump. Furiosa watches him work for a while, then attempts to make herself look busy by checking through a nearby supply cabinet, making sure it is stocked and organized.  
  
After a while, Max straightens up and puts down a couple dismantled pieces. “This bearing’s on its way out,” he says. “And the gasket here is split.”  
  
Furiosa approaches and leans over him, inspecting the parts with interest. Max sits back in his chair. He doubts she really needed help with that, and he knows she doesn’t need help with fixing those problems.  
  
“I’ll try to find you some replacements,” she says, and Max lets out a quiet sigh. He gets that she’s probably trying to help him, but he doesn’t want her help. He sits for a little while, but ends up wheeling himself away before she gets back.  
  
Furiosa isn’t the only one who tries to give Max things to do over the coming days. Cheedo asks him if he can help her with a couple crates she needs to carry to the medical room. Toast convinces him to dig through boxes of mixed supplies with her for the parts she needs to fix a motorbike. Dag tries to get him to work with her in the hydroponics garden. Capable asks him to double check some of the work schedules and make sure she hasn’t made any mistakes.  
  
He humors them for a while, but when Toast approaches him in the mess hall and tells him she’s got another job for him, he’s had enough. She pulls him back away from where he’s been staring silently at his empty plate on the table, and Max growls and grabs the grips on his wheels, halting Toast as she tries to roll him off.  
  
“Stop it,” he rumbles dangerously. “Just leave me alone.” He’s tired of everybody always coming up with reasons to try to help him, like he’s some charity case. He may not be able to do a lot himself anymore, but he sits around by choice, not because he’s helpless to find something he can do. He’s got a lot on his mind, and he just wants to be left alone with it.  
  
Toast seems a little taken aback, but she lets go of the handles of his chair, apologizes, and slowly walks away, and that’s all he cares about. Eventually he rolls himself back to the medical room for the night.  
  
“Ah, there you are,” Gale says as he makes his way to his bed. “Let me see you. It should be about time for that splint to come off.”  
  
Max grunts a wordless acknowledgement. She helps him move from his chair onto the edge of the bed, then unwraps the bandages on his right arm. She presses on it this way and that, testing its strength.  
  
She continues prodding as she speaks. “Any pain?”  
  
Max grunts a vague “no.”  
  
“Good,” she says with a smile. “I’d say it’s healed well enough.” She starts winding his arm bandage into a neat roll. “You can stay here tonight, but you’d better learn to get in and out of that chair yourself, boy. Your time in here is up tomorrow morning.”  
  
Max stares between his legs and the chair, and sighs quietly. He nods.  
  
The next morning he practices. With his wheelchair brakes locked, he feels fairly confident putting his back to the chair and pulling himself backward into it. Getting out of the chair is a little more awkward, but he manages it a few times. It’s as he’s getting back into his chair, ready to call it good enough to do on his own that the brake slips, the chair rolls away from him, and he crashes to the floor with a yell.  
  
Cheedo hurries over as Max pulls himself upright again. He leans against the bed, discouraged and breathing heavily from the surprise of the fall.  
  
“Here,” Cheedo says, “let me help.”  
  
Max glowers, doubting she’d be able to lift him, but she crouches beside him and pulls his arm over her shoulders, apparently determined to try anyway. He shakes her off.  
  
“Not going to have anybody to help me if I fall off in my own room,” he grumbles. He turns himself around and looks at the chair. It seems like an impossible obstacle, but he grabs the front of it and pulls himself up. It’s completely ungraceful, and Cheedo watches with open worry as he struggles to crawl up into the seat, but eventually he manages it and turns himself around. He collapses against the back, panting tiredly, but if he’s honest with himself, he’s a little proud of not needing help.  
  
He looks at Cheedo, forces a little smile and a thumbs up, then rolls himself past her and out of the room.  
  
Furiosa had already shown him where his new room was. It wasn’t quite ready at the time, but she’s told him it is now, and he goes there. He pushes the door open and wheels himself inside, and rolls to a stop immediately. Not only had she found him a real bed and mattress, a rare commodity even here in the Citadel, only afforded to a few, she had also put in a low worktable, complete with basic tools. There’s a washbowl in the corner sitting on a table with slightly mismatched, shorter legs screwed onto it to put it at his level. The sand bucket in the corner has a frame of poles built around it to help him get on and off.  
  
When he finds Furiosa that afternoon in the repair bays, he thanks her quietly for the way she outfitted his room.  
  
She gives a faint smile. “I just want you to be comfortable here.”  
  
Max returns a one-sided smile. Compared to life on the road camping or sleeping in his car, scraping by with what little he could get his hands on, life here is turning out to be downright luxurious. Honestly he’s not sure if he feels like he deserves it. But he does appreciate her efforts to make him feel at home here, even if he does still feel trapped.  
  
While he’s there, he also asks if she’d fix up his brakes. He doesn’t particularly want to risk a repeat of this morning’s incident. She makes quick work of it, then stands back and lets him test them. He gives her a nod. They lock well now, and solidly stop the chair from rolling.  
  
Over the next couple weeks, Max falls into a routine: haul himself into his chair in the morning, get food, then find some place where he can sit in peace without people finding him. His gloomy mood only worsens, and as people start to discover his hiding places throughout the two levels of the Citadel he can get to, he spends more and more time in his room instead. At least there it’s his space and he can be alone.  
  
He’s been having dreams about driving lately, dreams where he has his own two legs again and can feel the pedals beneath his feet. He smashes his right down on the gas and speeds away, the hot wind coming in through the window ruffling his hair. Sometimes he’s on old pavement, going as fast as his car will take him, sometimes he’s weaving between dunes, or rocks, or cruising on dusty land with nothing in his way. He turns the wheel hard, sends the back tires skidding in an arc, and the motion of it is so thrilling he wakes up with his heart racing. It’s as his heart rate slows and he sinks back onto his pillow that the ache sets in. He yearns to be out there so much it hurts.  
  
But there’s nothing he can do about it, so he hauls himself up and climbs into his chair, sometimes even in the middle of the night, just so he doesn’t have to have another dream that leaves him feeling so empty when he wakes up.  
  
As he sits in his room for the eighth day in a row, he jumps at a knock on his door. Furiosa had been visiting him often, and he appreciates her company some days, but others he just wants to be left alone. He’s used to alone. It’s comfortable for him.  
  
“Yeah,” he says flatly anyway.  
  
Furiosa opens the door but doesn’t come in. She leans the front of her shoulder against the edge of the door and regards him with an unimpressed look. “You gonna just sit there all the time?”  
  
Max looks up at her and back down. He feels like shit. Why can’t she just respect that and leave him alone?  
  
She tries again. “You can’t live your life like this.”  
  
Again, Max doesn’t say anything.  
  
“Well,” she continues, “Gale said you should be healed enough for these.” She finally moves away from the door and steps inside. In the hand that had remained hidden, she’s got two of what Max can only guess are prosthetic legs.  
  
Max looks at them doubtfully. “Can’t walk on two fake legs,” he says tiredly as she kneels down in front of his chair.  
  
“Yes, you can.” Her response is firm, and she starts rolling up his pant leg before starting to fit the shorter prosthesis over his left leg. It’s well-padded and fits snugly over his stump, and attached to it is what looks to be his old knee brace. It looks like the bottom part had been thoroughly mangled and then bent back into shape. Max just sits solemnly as she tightens the brace around his thigh.  
  
He lifts the leg as she moves on to his other stump. The prosthesis itself is simple, little more than a pole attached to a socket for his leg and a rounded foot on the bottom. The one she’s strapping onto him now is more complicated. The foot on it is shaped a little more like a real foot, and he can see a joint at the knee, cables and springs rigged up to it and the ankle.  
  
Furiosa steps back when she’s secured both legs to him, and he simply looks up at her despondently and doesn’t move. It’s not going to work.  
  
“Come on,” she says with a sigh, and steps forward again. She bends the knee of his right prosthesis and plants the foot on the ground, then grips his arms and starts pulling him up out of the chair.  
  
“This isn’t going to work,” Max says, clinging to her nervously as she puts him shakily onto his two new feet.  
  
“Just hang on to me,” she says. “You don’t know until you try.”  
  
Max tries to balance, but he can tell Furiosa is doing most of the work of holding him up. She grips his upper arms, pulling away from his hold on her and stepping back.  
  
“Working with the knee might take a bit of getting used to, so try for small steps at first,” she says. “Right leg first.”  
  
Max swallows, looking down at his shaking legs and feeling entirely uncomfortable with this. He teeters as he tilts his hip to pull the foot off the ground and swing it forward a short distance. The knee bends as the tip of the foot scrapes along the ground, and then it springs straight again as he gets it out in front of him.  
  
“Okay, good,” Furiosa encourages, taking another little step back herself but still holding onto his arms. Max moves forward and carefully puts weight back on his right leg and hesitantly lifts his left to take another step, but the metal knee of the right suddenly bends, and he starts to go down. Furiosa quickly plants her foot outward and stops his fall, but Max is shaken.  
  
He shakes his head. “Can’t do it.”  
  
“You’re not giving up this easily,” Furiosa says. “Try keeping your weight directly over your right leg before you pick up the left. Keep your thigh strong so the knee doesn’t bend when you don’t want it to.”  
  
“’S not easy,” he grumbles. “Legs are weak.”  
  
“We’ll take it slow.” She takes another step back and urges him carefully forward. He takes another step with his right and leans his weight forward as he lifts the left, but the knee still starts to bend at the end of his step, and he stops, shaking his head again.  
  
“Okay,” she says. “Hold on.” She places his hands on her shoulders before she slowly leans down. Max supports his weight on her, his legs still shaking. She clicks something on his prosthetic knee, then straightens up again. “That’ll lock it straight until you get the hang of balancing on them.”  
  
She takes him on a full, slow, hobbling circuit of the room. He still has to lean against her fairly heavily by the time they get back to his chair, and he motions toward it.  
  
“Hurts,” he grunts.  
  
Furiosa helps him back into his chair, and he flops tiredly into the seat.  
  
“It’ll get better,” she says, kneeling down and starting to take the legs off. “You’re still healing. And these are just the prototypes. We’ll get you ones that fit better as soon as we’re sure this design works for you.”  
  
Max nods quietly.  
  
She gets the legs off and leans them against the wall by his bed.  
  
“Thanks…” He still has doubts that this is going to be any better than the wheelchair, but he does appreciate her attempt to help.  
  
Furiosa gives him a soft smile. “We’ll get you walking again.”  
  
Every day after that Furiosa comes when she has time and straps Max’s new legs onto him whether he seems to want her to or not, and leads him around his room. With the aid of a walking stick, he eventually gets confident enough that she can let go of his arms and he can hobble along by himself, though he still leans heavily on his extra support for balance. Eventually, when his strength has improved, she unlocks the knee and he starts to learn to walk with its flex.  
  
He never wants to leave his room on his legs, though, and is rarely willing to do more than two or three circuits of his room before he wants the legs off again. When she’s not helping him learn how to use them, he still only ever wheels himself around in his chair, and he still spends most of his time in his room. She’s noticed, though, that he’s tinkered with the legs at his workbench, adjusted the sockets to make them more comfortable to wear, added more belts that fit them more securely to his body.  
  
She wishes he’d get out more, but she doesn’t want to push him too hard. Maybe once he’s walking smoothly he’ll feel better. It might take him a long time to accept the loss of his legs, but she can only hope that he’ll eventually return to something more like his usual self, the way he was before the accident took his freedom and the despair got the better of him.  
  
Max’s mood does start to improve as Furiosa continues to help him learn to walk on his new legs. He still has his doubts that he’ll ever be any good at this, but he’s improving, and maybe that’s worth something.  
  
Some days are better than others, though. Some days he doesn’t mind when Furiosa comes and helps him strap his legs on. He doesn’t mind going for a few circuits of his room on things he’s barely able to keep himself upright on. But some days he just wants to be left alone to his misery. The frustration at his inability to get out of here grows by the day, and he has no patience for being reminded of how truly unable he is to get anywhere on his own.  
  
Today was one of those days.  
  
He had done one circuit, but got annoyed as Furiosa tried to make him do a second. The legs still hurt a little, and he had fallen twice. He had fallen many times since he had started trying to walk on these legs, but today enough was enough and he had no desire to keep trying. Furiosa had left to his yelling, without even bothering to help him get into his chair and take the legs off like she usually did. He does it himself, still annoyed at the way he feels she treats him like he’s something in need of rescuing.  
  
He sits in the silence of his room, and it feels oppressive. His anger fades, and he starts to feel guilty. She’s just trying to help. The care and dedication she had been showing him was not deserving of the way he had acted toward her.  
  
He stares at the legs he had taken off and leaned against the wall. She had built them specifically for him. He could stand to be a little more grateful.  
  
The guilt nags at him. He’ll apologize tomorrow when he sees her. He tries to push it out of his mind for now. By the time his stomach is growling loudly enough to force him out of his room to go find some food, he wishes he could talk to her now. He doesn’t want her to be angry at him, though he knows he full well deserves it.  
  
He rolls himself up to the meal hall, hoping he might see her there for the evening meal. His eyes scan the tables of people, and he’s disappointed when he doesn’t find her. He starts to roll glumly over to get himself a plate of food, but stops before he gets there.  
  
He knows the sisters do dinner together nightly in their common room, and that Furiosa often joins them. He had been to the dinners a few times before, on the occasions he came back here, but not since the accident. He thinks she’d probably be there. But it’s far away, much higher in the Citadel than he could ever reach in a wheelchair.  
  
Before he knows it, he’s wheeling himself back to his room, without having gotten any food. He looks around, a little surprised to find himself here, and the legs leaning up against the wall catch his eye. He stares at them for a minute, then growls quietly to himself, goes over to the legs, and starts strapping them on.  
  
Getting up without help isn’t easy, and he ends up having to use his workbench as leverage and support, but he gets himself to his feet, grabs his walking stick, and walks himself unsteadily to the door. He takes a deep breath, and exits the room.  
  
Stairs are nowhere near easy, and he doesn’t trust the flex of his fake knee, so he locks it straight and takes the steps up slowly, leading with his left leg on every step, leaning forward on his walking stick, hoping against hope that he doesn’t lose his balance and topple backwards, because there’s nothing here for him to hang on to.  
  
He’s breathing heavily by the time he gets to the top of the first set of stairs, and when he reaches the next set, he stops and stares at them tiredly before he makes himself start up them. His left knee is already groaning in complaint.  
  
He passes by a few people on his way, and tries to ignore their stares. He’s sure he looks like he really shouldn’t be up on his feet, and honestly he probably shouldn’t be going this far on his own yet, but he’s not about to turn back. One person offers to help him, and he waves them off with a curt grunt.  
  
When he finally reaches the right door, he stops. He can hear cheerful talking and laughter behind it. He listens for Furiosa’s voice, but doesn’t hear it. He almost turns around and leaves, but finally he makes himself knock on the door.  
  
The voices go quiet, and after a moment, the door in front of him opens. Max leans heavily on his walking stick, his other hand propped against the wall next to the door, his legs aching and about to give out.  
  
Capable stares through the doorway at him for a moment in a sort of shocked surprise, looks down at his legs, then back up at him.  
  
“Sorry if I’m interrupting…” He starts self-consciously, but her face is already lighting up with a beaming smile.  
  
“Who is it?” Toast calls from inside, and Capable quickly grabs Max’s wrist and urges him in.  
  
He leans on his walking stick and grabs her arm with his other hand, pushing down on it as he takes a shaky step forward, indicating that he’s going to need a little help. The trip up here was not easy on him. She turns and steps back toward him, moving up against his side and gripping his upper arm and elbow solidly as she leads him inside.  
  
Max looks over the small group sitting around a low table as he passes through the doorway. Furiosa’s looking down quietly at her plate, but looks up as he takes a step and his foot clacks against the floor.  
  
Max stops and looks down. “Sorry,” he says, “that I yelled. Shouldn’t have… I know you’re trying to help…”  
  
Furiosa doesn’t say anything, and Max keeps his eyes on the floor. He doesn’t see her smile as she pushes herself up and moves toward him, but his eyes dart up as she steps into his space and gently brings her forehead to his, her hand coming up to grip the back of his head.  
  
“I understand,” she murmurs.  
  
A smile pulls at one side of Max’s mouth, and his cane clatters to the floor as he reaches up and cups his hand around the back of her head. He takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly.  
  
“Come on, sit down,” she says after she’s pulled away. She holds his upper arm and starts helping him toward the table. “We still have some food left.”


End file.
